


in for the kill

by 8611



Series: Variables and Controls [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Genderswap, Kidnapping, Torture, girl!Bond, girl!Q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:10:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond loves using her hands, after all. (genderswap, both Q and Bond.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in for the kill

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, the kidnapping and torture tags are sperate, and the torture happens off screen, and not to any of Bond + Co. (Bond's the one inflicting it, though.) Also, might have accidentally turned Q into Tony Stark, sorry about that. As usual, I have no idea how computers actually work. I spent about 4 or 5 hours trying to come up with a title, 'In For the Kill' by La Roux came on shuffle, and I had a FUCK IT CLOSE ENOUGH moment, ergo, silly title. 
> 
> Because I love visuals (and clothes), [eins](http://i.imgur.com/ldPLt.png) und [zwei](http://i.imgur.com/G6woq.png). No prizes for guessing who goes with what clothes. I know Craig!Bond wears an Omega, but I've always thought the Submariner was a cooler watch, and they're canon for the series overall (Bond's sported a Submariner in like half the films, and it was the original watch that Connery!Bond wore). [These](http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/613561203/SP-030-Women-font-b-Galaxy-b-font-Cosmic-Space-Tie-Dye-BLACK-Milk-Silk-Reflective.jpg) are the space leggings.
> 
> Last but certainly not least, because [mincamo](http://mincamo.tumblr.com/) is THE ACTUAL BEST, she spent last night livestreaming for me and drawing [this](http://mincamo.tumblr.com/post/38200851753/8611-inspired-me-to-draw-girl-q-i-hope-to-do-more) while I was writing, which is basically the best inspiration ever. <3

This whole thing starts a bit before Berlin, if Q is being honest.

It’s December, and Q answers the door in a tank top that’s hanging off her frame and a pair of leggings with a galaxy print she quite likes, because there’s no chance of it being her mother or landlady at just past midnight on a Tuesday. 

So of course it turns out to be Bond, who finds her opening the door with a biscuit wedged in her mouth and a cup of tea in her free hand and just a bit underdressed for this. 

(Bond, of course, is done up in her usual polished perfection, although Q notes with some satisfaction that her braid is coming a bit undone for once, and there might even be wrinkles in her trench.)

“What on earth are you doing here?” Q asks around a bite of biscuit, frowning. “It’d midnight.”

“Just in from Berlin,” Bond says, and pulls her hand out of her pocket, producing a nondescript little thumb drive. “I was told to deliver this straight to you.” 

Q frowns, but she takes the drive and gives it a quick look as Bond invites herself in, closes the door behind her, starts undoing the belt on her coat. The drive is a boring little thing, 8gb, something you could get at any electronics store. It’s molded plastic, so it doesn’t look like anyone’s tinkered with its insides (this is why Q likes metal shells, the kind of things you can pop open, change, alter, and put back together without anyone the wiser), and it offers up no clues about its contents. 

“From who?” Q asks, holding it up as Bond drops her coat across the arm of Q’s sofa.

“Contact in Berlin. We’ve had him for a while, they flipped him before the wall came down.”

“That is a while,” Q mutters, and then leaves her tea on the coffee table to go wrangle her laptop out of her room. 

(She’d been planning on bed, after this last cup of tea, and now Bond is here with mysterious flash drives, and there goes that idea.)

It’s entirely strange, that Q is siting here on her sofa with a mysterious flash drive and Bond, but also a testament to the current state of Q’s life that it’s not the most ridiculous thing that has happened in the last month. 

Q looks up and Bond is watching her from the other end of the sofa, drinking the tea she’s stolen. She has hawk’s eyes, ringed in owl make-up and lack of sleep that the color of her eye shadow is trying to hide. Bond must have left Berlin in a hurry, considering she usually looks like she has a team of artists on hand for this type of situation. 

“If you’re thinking about making a ‘your ass is out of this world joke’,” Q says mildly, “know that I will eviscerate you with an exploding screwdriver when you least expect it.”

“That begs the question,” Bond says, “when does one expect to be eviscerated with an exploding screwdriver?”

“Never, that’s the point,” Q answers, watching as her laptop starts decrypting the drive. 

“Besides,” Bond continues, “I don’t go for truly horrible pick-up lines. And I’ve always found your legs to be your best feature.”

“Yes well,” Q says, staring at the screen, frowning, “not all of us can look like Viking warrior goddesses.”

That startles a laugh out of Bond, and Q looks over at her from under her fringe. 

“That’s why you called me Valkyrie a few operations ago,” Bond says, and she’s smiling that smile of hers that has gotten many people throughout her life to drop their secrets (and lives) into her lap. Q personally finds it somewhat insufferable. 

“Well, obviously,” Q says.

“I thought it had to do with the whole who dies, who lives bit.”

“That too, somewhat.”

Q’s engrossed in her computer now, because the drive has decrypted and produced three remote boot programs and a single Word document. There’s a cold weight in Q’s stomach as she reads the document, translating neatly from German in her head, lips moving silently, and she opens up the first program only after she’s checked that her connection is as secure as ever. 

“Bond, you need to pull this asset in for questioning right now,” Q says, quiet and even. 

“What have you found?”

“I’m currently looking at a remote boot of Van Rompuy's computer, and I think the other two are from Merkel and Draghi's.” 

Bond’s on her phone and out the door before Q has even had the chance to look up at her. 

\---

Seven hours later, Q is standing in Mallory’s office with Bond, slightly low on sleep. Mallory has what Q has decided is The Flash Drive (capital letters necessary) in one hand, and is holding it up. 

“The asset has since gone missing?” Mallory is asking Bond, and Q is wondering for the third time why she’s here, because for the past five minutes Mallory and Bond have been having a conversation only between the two of them. 

“In the last 12 hours,” Bond says. 

“I need you two to go to Berlin,” Mallory says, and this catches Q’s ear. 

“Me as well?” Q asks, confused. She only goes out into the field to do hard installs of her *nix system she specifically designed for the agency, not chasing rouge assets across Europe. That’s strictly a job for the agents, field, 00, or otherwise. 

“Yes, you as well,” Mallory says. “I’ll call up a team from Station B so that you can have extra eyes and ears.” He hands Bond a folder, and Q can feel the color draining out of her face as Bond starts flipping through it, hands Q a passport and a ticket. 

“I, uh, I don’t fly very well, sir,” Q says. 

“I have you on record as doing a number of in person installs across Europe and Asia,” Mallory says, frowns, turns to his computer to no doubt make sure that he hadn’t misread something.

“I took the train,” Q says. “You’ll notice gaps in the date of departure and installation.”

“You’ll be fine,” Bond says, distracted by her folder of papers. “It’s an hour and a half flight.”

In Q’s mind, that’s an hour and a half of time for something to go wrong, and no small number of things can go wrong in an hour and a half. Q licks her lips and swallows, and stares down at the passport with her SIS ID photo and someone else’s name – _Alice Elizabeth Clarke_. It’s a very round, pretty name, in contrast to the sharpness of Q’s own, her real name, and she doesn’t particularly feel like an Alice. 

She supposes she is going down a bit of a rabbit hole though, so there’s something in that.

\---

It’s not as if Q’s never set foot on a plane before in her life, she has, numerous times, but she avoids it whenever possible. When people ask she just says she’s a nervous flyer. 

This answer is how she ends up in some posh members only lounge at Heathrow with Bond holding a cocktail in front of her face. Q is currently slumped in an overly modular armchair. 

“If you’re going to drug me, I’ll just take the drugs willingly, without the alcohol,” Q assures Bond as she takes the drink, stares down at it. It’s clear, no garnish, which means it could be any number of things up to and including a tumbler full of straight vodka. “What is this, anyway?”

“Hendrick’s and tonic, no cucumber,” Bond says. “Your cardigans remind me of a lecturer I had once who was constantly drinking them.”

“Why were you drinking with your lecturers?” Q asks, takes a sip, can practically taste how much the damn thing cost. Q wonders if Bond does anything for less than the average person’s paycheck. “And are you suggesting that my cardigans remind you of some old stodge at Oxbridge?”

(Q doesn’t actually know which one Bond went to, just that she had to have gone to one.)

“If you weren’t drinking with your lecturers then you received a shit education,” Bond says, and she’s got a martini as she sits down in the seat next to Q. “And yes, your cardigans do remind me of a 60-year-old man teaching a class on the Russian Revolution.”

“Which one?”

“1917.”

Q pulls a face, she’s never much been one for history. She enjoys the popular stories that come out of it, has read no small number of historical biographies, but it’s never something she could sink her teeth into, let alone do a whole degree in. 

“My cardigans are so excellent they would make that man weep,” Q replies, takes another drink, curls her feel up under her on the chair. She can feel her heart pounding already, and they're not even near the damn plane. 

“Probably,” Bond agrees, and when Q looks over she’s smirking.

“Bond,” Q says, grins, “do you have a secret love of my cardigans?”

“I appreciate good quality clothing,” Bond says. “That’s all.”

“Well thank you for noticing, I suppose. Half of my branch thinks I nicked them off of my grandfather.”

Bond is still smirking, and she leans over towards Q, face close to Q’s ear, and her breath is warm. 

“Although I have to admit, I’m more interested in what’s under them.”

And just like that Bond is collecting her satchel and standing up, checking her watch (it’s large, a man’s watch that should look out of place on her thin wrist, but somehow it never does).

“Come on, time to go,” Bond says, and Q is left there for a few seconds before she downs the rest of her drink and scrambles after Bond, coat in one hand and bag in the other. 

She completely forgets to be afraid of flying because Bond’s got her hand on Q’s thigh (high up, just under the hem of her skirt) for almost the whole flight, slowly rubbing circles into the skin below her tights. 

She completely forgets to be afraid of flying because her mind is racing in other directions instead, willing Bond’s hand to creep upwards, a hotel room in Berlin, and her breath catches a few times and she knows Bond is doing this on purpose, hovering on an edge between relaxing circles and something that’s driving Q just a bit mad. 

\---

Q’s hotel dreams end up being wrong, because instead she finds herself in a safe house with a fully functioning surveillance system and its own server. Q can’t complain. 

(There’s a post-it stuck to one screen – _team arrives tomorrow_.)

She’s kicked off her shoes, feet up on the desk and tablet in her lap, when Bond finds her, and Q nearly falls out of her chair when she sees Bond’s in a jumper and skinny jeans, snapping her watch into place. Q’s not sure if she’s ever seen Bond in trousers, let alone jeans.

“What are you-“

“Heading out,” Bond says, looking over Q’s shoulder at the camera feeds. “Keep an eye on me?”

“Of course,” Q says, like it’s stupid that Bond would even have to ask. Q’s not exactly expecting it when Bond puts her hand on Q’s shoulder, leans over, and Q’s heart jumps when she thinks that Bond’s going to kiss her, but instead she just nods at one of the security feeds. 

“I’m going out the back,” Bond says, and Q breathes out through her nose, nods, and then Bond is gone, out of Q’s world for a few minutes, before she reappears on the feed, wearing flat boots and a pea coat. Following the traffic cameras is easy, and Q sees why Bond changed – she’s just another darkly dressed person in an ocean of people during rush hour. There’s no color there, no place for Bond’s usual blue and blood red accents, no room for her delicately lethal stilettos. She looks like any other Berlin resident, just trying to get home after a long day. 

Q emails Mission Control to see how they’re holding down the fort, one eye on Bond as she flicks through the feeds to follow her, her tracking signal rendered as a red dot on one screen showing a map of Berlin. Eventually she ends up on the stairs to a boringly drab building, one in a sea of grey buildings, and she’s far in the corner of the screen so that Q can’t see what she’s doing. Q toggles through cameras, can’t find a good view, frowns. Bond’s either almost or fully out of range of all the cameras Q can get her hands on. 

Bond has gone out without an earpiece, so when she vanishes into the building Q’s only line of knowledge and communication is her mobile, but Bond doesn’t send anything, doesn’t offer up any information. Q runs the building address through their system, and finds a _last known address_ entry for one Schmidt, Daniel, which is useless. That’s clearly a cover name, it might as well be John Smith. 

Q stews for a bit, trying to decide best how to track Bond (and her dot’s been stationary for much longer than Q would like it to be, in the middle of the building on the map), when her mobile finally vibrates. 

_Flat has been searched, no sign of asset, or a body. Want his computer?_

Q exhales, not realizing that she’d been breathing shallowly. 

_Please, just the hard drive is fine. Look for any other drives._

Even though Q thinks it’s useless, she still watches Bond on her way back, now carrying a tote over one shoulder that could be anything, food for dinner, library books, work to be brought home. She looks, on the whole, disturbingly _normal_. It doesn’t sit well with Q, that Bond would ever be normal. She’s not supposed to be, and that’s fine with Q. Q’s the normal one. 

(Or, alright, slightly more normal. Less sociopathic by a few orders of magnitude, certainly.)

Once Bond’s back on the street the safe house is in, Q gets up and digs around in the kitchen, not shocked to find out that the only thing in the whole place is a jar of tomato relish, a tin of English breakfast tea, and an ample amount of alcohol. This seems to be standard agency procedure, the company flats in London that Q’s been to are similarly stocked. Q is thinking about making tea and attempting to find a takeaway place in the neighborhood when Bond kicks the door open and then closed behind her, never taking her hands out of her pockets. 

“Did you unlock the door with your teeth?” Q asks, incredulous. 

“Didn’t lock it when I went out,” Bond says, dropping the tote on one of the chairs at the bar and then pulling her coat and scarf off. The tip of her nose and ears are red, Q notes, distracted, when Bond starts pulling her jumper off. There’s nothing but a black bra underneath, and Q might go slightly cross-eyed, briefly. Eve had once described Bond as being in possession of a, and she quotes, “prodigious rack,” which yes, she certainly is. 

Bond is still shedding clothes as she heads towards one of the two bedrooms, and Q just leans back out of the kitchen to watch, jaw slightly unhinged. 

Q’s debating what to do with this all when Bond sticks her head out of the room, hands in her hair as she pulls her braid out. 

“Are you coming or not?” Bond asks. “Because otherwise I’m going to sleep, I haven’t gotten more than 15 hours this whole week.”

“Why?” Is the only thing Q can get out of her mouth. 

“Because it’s going to get a lot more crowded around here starting tomorrow when your little minions show up, and the internal walls aren’t very thick.”

“No,” Q says, pinches the bridge of her nose, blinks a few times. “Why me?”

“Because you’re attractive,” Bond says, and her tone suggests that this is the most obvious thing she's had to spell out for anyone all week. 

“But- I-“

“Q,” Bond says, and crooks a finger, beckoning Q over. Q’s feet start moving. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but sometimes you don’t need a reason to sleep with someone.”

“This is true,” Q says when she’s a few inches from Bond. 

“I would have had you on the plane, but the woman sitting across the aisle was already on the verge of making a fuss about what I was doing,” Bond says, and her voice is lower now, in a register that Q’s used to hearing over an earpiece but never in real life. “It’s amazing, really, you can face down a nuclear apocalypse without breaking a sweat, but I put my hand on your leg and you get flustered in under ten seconds.”

Q’s hands have found their way to Bond’s hips, just above the unadorned waistband of her underwear, simple black material like her bra. 

“I’ve always been better with the apocalypse than sex,” Q admits, and Bond grins, wide and predatory. She kisses Q, openmouthed, as she starts undoing the buttons on Q’s cardigan and pulling her into the room. 

Bond has a habit of kicking doors shut. 

\---

Q’s standing in the security room, pacing back and forth in nothing but underwear and her shirt from earlier (now somewhat wrinkled), and waiting as the drives that Bond had liberated run through Q’s decryption program. 

(It’s wonderful when your personal system runs on the whole network.)

The door opens and Q stops when Bond enters, much more clothed, as she’d gone out to get food. She drops a bag on the worktable in the room, pulling out plastic boxes and chopsticks. 

“You should dress like this more often,” Bond notes. 

“I don’t think it’s office appropriate,” Q says, can feel her cheeks heating up. When Bond turns around (her hair is done back up, like armor) Q can see the crescent marks that Q had left at the back of her neck, digging her fingers into the skin as Bond took her apart. 

One of the computers beeps and Q licks her lips, turns her attention to the wall of screens. The decryption is done on one of the drives, and there are files scrolling past. Q frowns, pauses the stream, scrolls back up, starts at the top. 

By the time she’s gotten to the bottom of the file list Bond’s behind her, navigating noodles and chopsticks with practiced ease. 

“Bloody hell,” Q mutters, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “This is going to take forever, we shouldn’t have- I shouldn’t have-“

“Q, please, it was barely an hour,” Bond says. “If I really wanted to distract you we’d still be in bed. I knew there was work to do.”

There’s definitely heat in Q’s cheeks, and throbbing in other places. She rubs her legs together without thinking, and she knows Bond notices, because one of Bond’s hands comes around her chest, tweaks a nipple through her shirt as she reaches to type something into the computer, scroll back up a few files. Q can only squeak out a surprised little huff, eyes wide at the sudden senstation.

“This is still going to take all night,” Q says, collects herself, although her voice sounds breathy to her own ears, and Bond is standing incredibly close. 

“I’ll get you tea,” Bond says, heads for the kitchen, and Q sinks into the computer chair with a sigh, puts her head in her hands for a moment, and wonders if she’s going to be able to get any work done tonight with Bond here, in the same space as her, when she’s wet again. 

Bond is a walking disaster zone for Q’s clear thinking and organizational skills, she swears. 

Still, she does bring Q tea and takeaway and sits a few feet away from her as they start in on the files together, and after a while Q finds it’s easy to slip into data and information, calming consistency under her fingers. 

\---

Q’s not enjoying this new habit of hers, answering the door for SIS personnel in various states of undress. This is currently a problem because her shirt is semi-see through, she’s still missing trousers, and she’s sure she looks like absolute shit in general. Not sleeping all night and staring at a screen will do that to you.

The team show up promptly at 7am, two men and a woman, all young, all probably brainy in the way that SIS likes (ridiculously intelligent and just a little bit grey with their morals, maybe broken just a tiny bit around the edges, and Q would know, she’s the poster child). They introduce themselves (Emma, Charlie, Michael) and they don’t say anything about Q’s lack of clothes. 

She sends them into deal with Bond and then makes a beeline for what seems to have become the room she’s sharing with Bond. Jumper, jeans, socks, Q gets as much of her skin covered as possible, and then finally rejoins the group, raking a hand through her hair to get it to stay down a bit.

“I’ll make tea,” Bond says, brushes past Q as she leaves. She knows that Bond probably hates menial tasks such as making tea, but she also knows that Bond is probably going a bit stir crazy after staring at intel all night. Bond’s used to taking the intel and running, not having to shift and sort through it. 

“Alright,” Q says. “Here’s the deal: these drives are from the asset’s flat, and we’ve gotten through one and a half of the three. There’s a large number of personal communication, both from the asset and others who we don’t know yet. I’m running names and bank numbers from a document that was nothing but financial information. I haven’t gotten any hits yet, but the program is still running. A few useless personal documents, a few governmental documents. The third took the longest to break, so I’m guessing what we want is in there, but I wanted to get through the other two first.”

“Do we have any known associates?” Emma pipes up, and god, they’re young, but they must be good if they’re already working at Station B. 

(Q wonders if this is how Bond felt the first time they met.)

“That’s being run,” Q says. 

“We’ll finish the second drive, start on the third,” Charles says, and Q gestures to the computers, goes to get more chairs. It’s much easier to direct operations than go through information when Q’s this tired, and she stands behind them as they go through documents, programs, communication logs, pointing things out from time to time. Bond drifts in and out of the room, and it’s around noon when something finally hits. 

“Bond,” Q calls through the open door, and she’s suddenly at Q’s side, all business, no teasing. “We’ve got an associate hit in our database from the accounts, Stefan Lindgren. Swedish national, involved in banking.”

“I know him,” Bond says, frowns. “I was tasked to him when I was a field agent.”

“What purpose?”

“Seduce him and get information. My cover is still intact with him, that shouldn’t be hard.”

“Can we figure out where he is?” Q asks, and Emma starts typing furiously. 

“An S. P. Lindgren cleared German customs yesterday,” she says after a minute. “The address he gave was the InterContinental.” 

“I know where he’s going tonight,” Bond says, grins. “He always did love opera.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Q says. 

“Adverts for La Traviata when I was out last night. Let’s hope he still feels a certain lack of commitment to his wife.”

“Ah, just your type,” Q says, rolls her eyes, “married.”

“Of course,” Bond says, and leaves, presumably to slip back into a role she doesn’t have to play much these days. 

\---

The minions tell Q to get some sleep, and she wastes the afternoon curled up in the too large bed. At one point, in a sleepy haze, she swears someone joins her in bed, wraps their arms around her, but she’s exhausted and it’s easy to slip back away into REM state.

When she wakes up the bed is empty, and she takes a shower to scrub sleep and sex off of her skin, feeling more like a human being and less like a zombie by the end of it. There’s evidence of someone having been in the bathroom, and there’s a make-up bag tucked neatly on the shelves that wasn’t there before. There’s also a delicate earpiece sitting on the counter, and Q sighs, purses her lips, and hopes Bond hasn’t flown the coop yet. 

Luckily, Q catches Bond at the door, and for one moment Q thinks about backing her into the wall and getting her hands under her dress, but there’s work to be done. Still, Q can’t exactly be blamed – Bond’s dress is skin tight, slit up to the middle of one thigh, and although it’s high in the front, cut across her shoulders with sleeves down to her elbows, it’s also totally backless. 

“Earpiece this time,” Q says. “Try not to wander too far.”

Bond just makes a sort of humming noise of acknowledgement under her breath as Q curls the silver device around her ear. It looks like some sort of exotic ear cuff, and on purpose. Earpieces are impossible to hide if someone is looking for them, Q’s found, but gorgeous women in low backed dress with extravagant taste in jewelry are common enough.

(If Q’s hand lingers a bit too long, Bond doesn’t comment.)

“So, tell me,” Bond says, leaning in to Q’s personal space. “Will you listen in as normal?”

Q knows exactly what she’s talking about. Technically they don’t have to listen to everything in real time, but Q-branch has been privy to no shortage of Bond’s liaisons over the years, claiming intel reasons. 

(In reality it’s because they’re all terrible people and usually have bets going about Bond’s sexual partners, and it occurs to Q that she’s just entered herself in that particular pot.)

“In the interesting of security,” Q says, stares straight at Bond. Lack of sleep and caffeine always make her a bit sharper, a bit more rough and willing to indulge emotions she wouldn’t normally. “I wouldn’t risk a dead 00.”

“Of course not,” Bond says, and then tips Q’s chin up for a kiss (Bond is taller than her normally, and now she’s in 4-inch heels) and is gone, the door clicking shut behind her. Q closes her eyes, scrubs a hand across her face, and wonders how she’s been turned into a sex-addled teenager over night. 

(This is Bond’s fault. It’s always Bond’s fault.)

The Minions Three are still at it, and they start twittering the moment Q walks in. 

“Ma’am, the third drive is mostly sorted through, and it appears to be nothing but government documents from sources the asset shouldn’t have had.”

“We’ve uncovered a trail of bank accounts and some can’t be traced at all and seem to be held by corporations and subsidies rather than individuals.” 

“Everything seems to be coming from within the Eurozone, although there are some outside documents from countries that are EU candidates, mostly from Croatia and Turkey.” 

“Excellent,” Q says, working her way through the chatter. “Keep going, and Bond’s on the clock, so I’m going to take charge of her.”

They all nod like little ducklings, and Q sits cross-legged on the worktable with her own laptop and communications open. Bond appears to be in a cab, heading for the city center.

There’s minimal communication that needs to be done, and Q turns the volume almost all the way down when the opera starts (Q’s always hated Verdi), and then grabs a pair of headphones afterwards, in the interest of, ah, security. Also embarrassment, lest the minions hear. 

Eventually Q ends up out on the sofa, with the door to the security room closed, and goes back and forth between deciding to turn the sound off totally or turn it up, or, alternatively, stick her hand down her jeans. Q’s normally a fan of taking third options, but she keeps her hands firmly planted on her keyboard and tries to be as objective as possible, listening for anything that might be of use. There’s been some chatter about accounts in Sweden and Switzerland, which Q takes as a good sign, but it eventually devolves into Lindgren calling Bond by his wife’s name and Bond laughs, breathy, this perfect woman who doesn’t even care, because that’s her part. 

Q eventually curls up on the sofa, and when she wakes up, the flat dark, someone has closed her laptop and set it aside and put a blanket over her. She sits up, groans, and reaches for her glasses as she hears the door start to open, and her hand drops under the coffee table instead, where she’d seen Bond stash a gun when they first got here. 

She’s up, gun leveled at the door when Bond walks through it, flips on the lights, and raises an eyebrow. 

“You know, shooting me would result in no small amount of paperwork,” Bond says, and Q sighs, drops her hands and puts the safety back on the gun before leaving in on the table. She sits back down on the sofa, and Bond comes over to her, putting her hands on the back of the sofa, hovering over Q. She smells like expensive cologne and champagne, but there’s not a hair out of place on her head, and when she bends down to kiss Q, Q pushes her hands into her hair and starts tugging it out of the up-do she’s put it in, and Bond doesn’t stop her. 

\---

Q wakes up when Bond’s mobile rings, and she rolls over, jostling the mattress and pulling at the covers. Q huffs, pulls them back a bit, and curls up in a cocoon of blankets as Bond mutters a sleepy little _hello?_

Q frowns, turns her head to listen. Bond’s the kind of person who’s instantly awake, and Q knows it’s an act the moment there’s an honest to god, round, perfect laugh that the person on the other end of the phone gets. Bond sits up and starts speaking what Q can only identify as something Scandinavian (and really, how many goddamn languages does she know?) and the pieces click into place. Lindgren, then. 

She must have drifted back off to sleep, because the next thing she’s aware of is Bond’s hand sneaking across her waist, slipping lower. Q lets out a breathy sigh, rolls onto her back, and is more than happy to let Bond kiss her awake. When Bond’s hand lazily slips between her legs Q’s breath shudders out of her and her back arches, Bond’s other hand skimming across her stomach. 

“What-“ Q has to draw in a deep breath, grind her hips up against Bond’s stupidly talented fingers (which are in no hurry, it would seem). “What did Lindgren want?”

“I’m meeting him for breakfast,” Bond murmurs, lips almost touching Q’s, and Q huffs out something that she means to be a laugh but turns into a moan when Bond’s hand suddenly stills, and then vanishes. 

“Are you trying to kill me?” Q asks, voice rough, opening her eyes to glare at Bond. Instead her expression falls a bit slack when Bond pops her first two fingers into her mouth, sucks the taste of Q off of her skin. “Yes, yes you are.”

“Duty calls,” Bond says, kisses Q one last time and then gets up, leaving Q frustrated and buzzing to watch her naked back disappear into the bathroom.

Q groans when she hears the shower turn on, and she rolls over, props her body up on an elbow and knees, and nearly bites into her own arm when she comes, thinking of Bond’s hands instead of her own. 

At least she can get to work with some semblance of a clear head. 

\---

Bond at least takes the earpiece, and when Lindgren mentions something about a name they haven’t come across yet, a friend in town, it pings in Q’s mind.

“Run that name,” Q says, stares at the screens over Charlie’s shoulder. 

“Ramiro Torres, Spanish and Swiss citizenship,” Charlie says, squinting at the screen. “Last known residence was in Greece, but that was just over three years ago, nothing else. No one by that name has come through German customs in the last week.”

“Go back further, aliases?”

“Four of them,” Emma chimes in. “Want me to run them?” 

“Please do.”

Q leans back against the worktable, watches the screens, sips her tea. She roves over the information spilled out across the screens, looking for something. 

“One of his aliases is tied to Mossad wetwork,” Emma says. “It appears to be a legitimate passport.”

“Run it,” Q says.

“That’s the one,” Michael says. “The Mossad alias crossed into the EU two weeks ago, in Bulgaria. He’s on a bus manifest that stopped in Berlin.”

“Bond,” Q says, knows that Bond can hear her. “Torres is a wet boy. I’m sending his photo to your mobile.”

Up on the small traffic cam feed in one corner of the screens, Q watches as Bond sits back, laughs, uncrosses and re-crosses her legs. She got the message. She and Lindgren are at some stupidly posh café, sitting outside despite the cold. Bond’s legs are bare (she’s impervious to the cold, Q swears), and she’s wearing pointed t-strap heels that Q’s rather fond of. 

“One of Torres’ aliases is a known associate of both Schmidt and Lindgren,” Charlie says, turns around in his chair to face Q. “Flipped back?”

“No,” Q says, stares at the screens again. “Don’t make too much out of the connection, there’s a file somewhere in the system that probably says I’m a known associate of Julian Assange.” 

Three faces turned towards her, blinking owlishly in confusion. 

“It’s a long story,” Q says. 

(It's not, actually, it's just that anyone hacking in the mid 90s probably had at least one connection to Assange just by virtue of being online, and Q wasn't exactly hiding in the corner of the interent those days. The reason it's easier to say that it's a long story is that the Assange connection is in a file, somewhere in the mess that is the SIS paper archives, under the name _"Toccare"/Silver, Xander_ , that Q is fairly sure that her own employer still hasn't connected to her, even though she spent a number of her teenage years going by that name online.)

The Minions Three turn back towards their screens, but Michael keeps sneaking glances at her like she’s going to spill half of Britain’s secrets all over the internet and then go running off to hole up in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Bond vanishes from the feed eventually (after a kiss from Lindgren that looks painfully slobbery) and a few minutes later she pops up on the speakers in the room. 

“Give me everything you have on Torres.”

“Connections with Mossad, a number of private agencies, wetwork primarily, although he has some white collar theft associated with one of his aliases. No current known residence, I’m willing to bet he’s been slipping through the cracks for a while. I don’t trust the citizenship in his file, but supposedly he’s a dual national of Spain and Switzerland.”

“Could he have killed Schmidt?”

“We don’t even know if Schmidt is dead.”

“Q,” Emma says (Q has finally gotten them to stop calling her ma’am), “I think I have eyes on Torres.”

Q’s at the screen in an instant, staring between Torres’ picture on one screen and the man on a crowded platform at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. The camera is grainy, the picture total shit, and Q frowns. 

“I’m running recognition, but I only have a 60% match,” Charlie says. 

There’s another man with him on screen, and all Q needs to see is – there. He moves his coat, he’s armed. Torres finally turns towards the screen, and it all clicks neatly into place. 

“Bond, how fast can you move in those heels?” Q asks. 

“Where do I need to be?” 

“Central Station, upper level, Torres and an unknown have just come in on a local train. Nothing descriptive, although the unknown is wearing a New York Yankees hat.” (Q can’t imagine there are too many people running around Berlin with those.)

“On it.”

Q gives clipped directions as they move, first out into the plaza and then onto Invalidenstraße, moving east. 

Bond cuts out after that, and Q can only watch as her dot moves through the streets, actually rather fast for someone wearing the kind of heels that would give Q a nosebleed from the height. 

Q watches, eyes sharp, as Torres and his friend take their leisurely time walking. It’s only when they’ve headed up a side street that Q realizes why Bond’s dot was moving so fast – she pulls a hard turn into the street on a motorbike before ditching it just before it slides into the wall. The two turn just in time for Bond to rip off her helmet, slam it into the unknown’s head, sending him crumpling to the ground, and pull a gun on Torres from god only knows where. Bond wears tight dresses and yet always has a gun on her. 

“Get rid of the team, I’m bringing him in,” Bond says, and the three look up at Q, confused. 

“Understood,” Q says, and stands up straight from where she’s bent over, staring at the screens. 

“We should be here to help,” Emma says, frowning. 

“Not for this,” Q says. “I’ll call you back in later, if I need you.”

Q ushers the minions out, powers down the computers so that all she’s left with are the security feeds from around the building and in the flat, and watches as eventually Bond turns up in the back alley, hauling Torres by the shoulder, which Q notes is probably dislocated, from the way it’s hanging. 

Bond isn’t normal. Bond isn’t perfect. Bond is very, very good at her job, and right now her job is in the safe house. 

Q stays in the security room, with the door shut, stares out the window, and slips on a pair of the surveillance headphones when Torres starts making noise out in the main room, shattered animalistic sounds that come from someone having their fingers broken, wrists snapped, other shoulder dislocated. 

Bond loves using her hands, after all. 

\---

It’s dark out when Q comes out of her room of computers, having wrapped herself in the data from the last drive, the most important, when her hands started shaking and she needed something to do. She’d sent it to Mission Control back home, and to M, and sorted through it again, and now the flat is dark and there’s no sign that anything happened here at all in the last few hours. 

She’s staring out the window behind the sofa, concentrating on nothing but the tea she’s trying to fit into all the empty places in her body, willing the warmth into heavy limbs and buzzing fingers, when Bond gets back, her trench done up to her neck and her hands in black leather gloves. 

Q looks over her shoulder as she takes off the coat, the gloves, and there’s blood on the grey of her dress and splattered across her neck, and her fingers are red with it. It’s drying, turning a burnt color, and when Bond meets Q’s eyes they’re too blue and Q looks away, back out at the dark city and bright lights. 

Somewhere, distant, there is a shower turning on. Q sits down on the floor, back to the sofa, and makes herself small in that space, her space, and tries to compartmentalize and box things off. She’s good at that, and this isn’t new. She’s seen Bond tear into people on camera a number of times before, but it’s never exactly been in the next room. 

Q sets her empty mug down, crosses her arms over her knees and eventually her mind is able to slip into something between easy coding - a habit - and this strange place where she doesn’t have any thoughts. 

Bond finds her there, skin still slightly damp, hair wet and tossed up at the back of her head quickly, and she kneels down next to Q, wraps her arms around Q’s shoulders, presses a fierce kiss into Q’s messy hair. Q doesn’t look at her, keeps staring straight ahead, and Bond doesn’t make her move. 

“Will you be alright?” Bond asks. 

“Of course,” Q says, and it’s not a lie, she will be. She’ll probably be fine a bit faster than she would have liked, too long ago, when she was someone else and dead people and blood were things on computer screens and in movies. Now she just needs to let it ride and push it away. 

Q drops her knees eventually, legs flat on the cool floor, and Bond takes it as the invitation it is, straddling Q’s hips and kissing her forehead, closed eyes, ears, lips. Q shudders, uncrosses her arms from where they’re pressed into her chest, and finally slips them around Bond’s waist, and it feels warm, right, when their bodies settle together. 

\---

The team is back the next morning, and they sit around the table with matching mugs of tea, sneaking glances at Bond and Q as they move around the flat, finishing up with the breakfast they’d gone out to get. Q finally joins them with a mug of her own, and Bond is the last one to come over, leaning on Q’s shoulder and looking at the four tablets spread across the table. 

(Q really, really hates paper trails.)

“This is a write up of intel from Torres,” Q says, detached because it’s easier, and it really is fine, just like she said. “Lindgren is acting as an information broker between a number of EU officials, which Schmidt somehow became privy to, Torres didn’t know how. Presumably the information he slipped us was to sound an alarm.”

“Schmidt’s status?” Michael asks. 

“Dead,” Q answers. “The body should be recovered today, Torres was helpful in that regard. The information had to do with money laundering and insider trading in the wake of the euro weakening. I need you three to comb back through the drives, cross reference every single last name that was attached to any of those bank numbers with our home database – I called Q-branch, they know to expect the traffic – and try to track down anything we missed the first time. If you need to you can get more people in here, more eyes means we’ll miss less.”

The minions hop up to do Q’s bidding, and that just leaves Q and Bond at the table. 

“You don’t have any cigarettes, do you?” Q asks, quiet, and Bond shakes her head in Q’s peripheral vision. “Alright, I’m going to go around to the corner shop and get a pack.”

“I’ll watch the team,” Bond says, and Q grins, shakes her head.

“They don’t need to be babysat.”

“Just in case.”

Q ventures outside in her coat and giant scarf, hands in her pockets. The girl behind the counter at the shop smiles at her and Q stands on the corner and fumbles with cold fingers and her lighter. 

Someone grabs her by the arm, fingers too sharp and hard for anything good, and Q tries to twist away without thinking, grabbing her cigarette and pressing it, cherry first, into the cheek of whoever’s just grabbed her. 

She finds herself face to face with a man she’s never met, his teeth clamped in agony, and his other hand comes up to encircle Q’s wrist, pressing down and making Q kick out a small noise, half surprise and half pain. She drops the cigarette, and stares at the mark she’s left instead. 

For a moment they don’t move, and then Q slams her knee into his groin, makes him double over and let her wrist and arm go. She’s off like a shot, and there’s a shout, a car door, footsteps. 

_Shit shit shit –_

She runs away from the flat, not wanting to lead them to it, and the cold air seers her lungs as she sprints down the street, which is stupidly deserted because it’s a Sunday morning. She fumbles in her pocket for her mobile, nearly trips, and keeps going instead, veering across the street right before oncoming traffic, hoping to cut them off. 

The second time she tries, she gets her mobile out, frantically punching in numbers without looking.

“Bad news,” she pants when Bond answers, and she hoofs it around another corner. There are still footsteps behind her, and she hears a shot and shattering brick and they’re armed, lovely. “I think someone’s trying to kidnap me.”

“Where are you?” Bond is hard, cold, and Q can’t take the time to find a street sign. 

“Two blocks north of the corner shop,” Q says, and then hangs up when a rubbish bin to her right falls over, a bullet sent straight through it. High caliber, must be something heavy and large. That doesn’t bode well, if they’re just trying to stop her they’re going to end up shredding her to bits. She’d prefer not to loose a leg. 

Q’s head is starting to spin, her lungs are burning, and she ends up in an alley, spots a window that's cracked open. She hefts herself up on a rubbish skip covered with sheets of plywood, grabs a windowsill, and is trying to lift her body up towards the open window when someone shoots the cement she’s hanging from and she drops back down onto the skip in surprise, the impact jarring her breath from her lungs. She gasps, rolling onto the ground with another drop, and groans when her shoulder takes the brunt of her weight. Her glasses have come off, and the world is fuzzy. 

There are two men over her, both armed, and one has a cigarette burn on his cheek. They’re made of undefined lines and soft shapes in Q’s vision. 

Q tries to roll onto her side, aiming to slam her elbow into an ankle, but someone brings the butt of a gun down on her head instead.

\---

The first thing Q is aware of is that she’s under a blanket, on the kind of modern, hard sofa that people tend to put in flats that are made of glass and polished metal. 

The second thing is that she’s got the mother of all headaches, and when she reaches up to press a hand to the part of her head that’s throbbing, she comes away with tacky, half dried blood on her fingers, and an aching shoulder. It’s the one she had fallen on, and although it feels like it’s in one piece, it still hurts. 

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” someone says, and when Q blinks – vision still blurry – up at the person suddenly towering over her, she can make out enough of them to trigger a memory in her addled brain. 

Lindgren smiles at her, and he looks a bit like a shark. Up close Q can tell that he’s taken care of himself, despite the fact that his file says he’s 58, and he’s still got a full head of hair. His English is barely accented, caught somewhere in that neutral tone that Q associates with Scandinavians. 

“I do apologize, but your Jemma has a friend of mine,” Lindgren says, sitting down on the sofa by Q’s feet, and Q drags herself up into a sitting position, putting herself in the corner of the sofa, facing Lindgren. The room is decorated as Q thought it would be, and she notices a number of probable weapons right away – heavy metal bowl on the low, glass coffee table, angular statue on the side table, her shoes where someone has left them next to the sofa like they’d been putting her to bed after a long night. The heel isn’t high on them, but it could still do some damage when applied to softer body parts. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Q says. Actually, Bond doesn’t have Torres. He’s either dead or in SIS custody, but of course Q doesn’t volunteer this information. 

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you,” Lindgren says. “You are all somewhat… lacking in trustworthiness.”

“What, women or Brits?” Q asks, glares, and Lindgren laughs. 

“You have claws, I see, you did a number on Jacob.”

“Smoking’s bad for you.”

Q hates Lindgren’s smile. She inches up further into her corner of the sofa, and Lindgren gets up, straightens his suit. Q’s aware that there’s something that might be fear in her gut, and she keeps waiting for Lindgren to extend a hand to her, cause her pain, somehow. She hopes if he does anything it’s to hit her, or kick her, she can deal with that. She can deal with physical pain. That’s easy.

“Do you know what Jemma gets up to in her free time?” Lindgren asks, and Q wants to say _yes, she seems to spend these days fucking me and torturing your hired guns_. She stays silent instead, eyes hard. “She came back to me, I should note. I wouldn’t say she’s the best choice of partner.” 

Q is suddenly aware that Lindgren has no idea who Q actually is. She must have been grabbed because Lindgren saw them together, and he seems to be operating under the impression that Q is just Bond’s girlfriend, nothing more. 

Lindgren turns to the side, fiddles with one of his cufflinks and sighs. 

“You’ll have to stay here until I get my associate back,” Lindgren says, and he makes to move away, before he turns back to Q. “Oh, and next time you go on holiday, make sure it’s not with a member of the British Secret Service. You’ll have a much nicer time.” Lindgren says this like he’s revealing a grand secret, spilling Bond’s identity all over the floor like marbles. 

Q could laugh. She really wants to, but she manages to get her face schooled into something between anger and surprise, which she imagines one would feel if they’d gotten kidnapped on holiday because they were doing something stupid like sleeping with a 00.

(Q _is_ doing something stupid like sleeping with a 00, but at least she’s aware of all the variables going into the situation.)

Lindgren leaves her in his stupidly modern living room, and Q can hear the door lock. That’s not too much of a problem, Q can deal with that later. First, she gets up, slightly unsteady on sore legs and with a woozy head, and takes stock of the room, moving around it. There are a number of heavy metal implements, no shortage of glass to break, and there’s plenty of cording in the TV cabinet. 

She’s left to pace for hours, listening at the door periodically. She stops by the window every once and a while, thinks about trying to break the glass, but they’re about five floors up and Q doesn’t trust her body to survive the drop. The door only locks from the outside, and Q knows if she tried to open it by dismantling the handle someone would notice. She can hear movement from the other side of the door, low gruff voices, and she assumes that someone must have been left on the door. 

After finding nothing electrical that could cause an overload, she finally frowns, stops in the middle of the room, and clenches her hands, her jaw, wants to _get out_. She feels powerless, and she hates this. If she makes it out of this alive, she’s never, ever going out into the field again. This has been enough fieldwork for three or four lifetimes. 

Eventually she settles on ripping the TV off the wall, and pulling the DVD player, amp and stereo from the cabinet, working them apart with her nails and the corner of a hardback from the meager selection of books in the room. She’s never exactly tried to fashion a taser out of the components of a home entertainment system, but not having done something hasn’t stopped her before, either. Luckily the remotes have working batteries, and her vision up close isn’t that bad without her glasses. The task gives her something to do, sink her mind into, forget about where she is.

The last thing she does is shatter the screen of the TV and wrap the casing from the cords and wires around the bottom of a few shards, so that she can fit them between her fingers if she need to. They’ll hurt her as well, but hopefully they’ll stick in whomever she manages to punch.

The goons outside the door must assume she’s just trashing the room, because no one comes for her the whole time, and she slips the shards in one pocket of her cardigan and hides the taser under the blanket when she sits back down on the sofa, pulling the blanket up around her and staring at the door, waiting. They have to come back eventually. 

\---

Q snaps awake when she hears gunshots a body hitting the door. She scrambles upright, reaching into her pocket to slip the shards between her fingers, grabs the taser with her other hand, and she steps over the coffee table, silent on the carpet in bare feet. The handle rattles and she drops down a bit, bending her knees, knows that she packs much more force when she’s moving upwards. 

She’s not expecting Bond and Eve to come through the door, Bond double wielding her Walther and a Beretta and Eve with a submachine gun not unlike the one that had knocked Q out hours earlier. 

Q drops onto the coffee table with a long exhale, letting the taser hit the glass next to her and rubbing at her face with the hand that doesn’t currently have spikes of glass in it. There’s no anger or fear anymore, just stupid relief. 

“Did you cannibalize the TV?” Bond asks as Eve comes over to her, sits down next to her. 

“More importantly,” Eve says, shoots Bond a glare, “are you alright?” 

“Amazingly, yes,” Q says. 

“We should move,” Bond says, and Q nods, lets Eve help her up. She grabs her taser and shoes, and has to step over a body on their way out. Everything is dark, and with Q missing her glasses she relies on Eve to navigate, Bond ahead of them, leading with her gun. There’s a car out back waiting for them, and as soon as they’re moving Bond is on her, hands slipping across her neck, shoulders, under her shirt, checking for wounds that Q knows she’s not going to find, because there are none. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Q says right as Bond’s hand stills over what’s now dried blood on her scalp, and Bond’s lips are a thin line, her eyes hard. “That’s all they did, I promise.”

“That’s all?” Bond asks. 

“I promise,” Q repeats, takes Bond’s hand in her own to get her to stop poking and prodding at her head. “I think falling off a skip did more damage.”

“When did you fall off a skip?” Eve asks, raising an eyebrow. Q notices when her eyes shift to where Q’s still got a grip on Bond’s hand, and she lets Bond go, tucking her hands into her lap instead. 

“While attempting to not get kidnapped, which I failed at rather spectacularly.”

“In the grand scheme of kidnappings, this wasn’t that bad,” Eve says. “Which is extremely good.”

“It’s because they had no clue who I am,” Q says, and both Eve and Bond are looking at her now. “They nicked me because they thought I was your girlfriend on holiday with you or something, just as collateral to get Torres back.” 

Eve’s eyebrows are making a bid for her hairline. 

“I’d be upset, if it wasn’t for the fact that I find it all slightly hilarious,” Q says. “Only slightly though.” 

“You’re sure you’re-“

“I’m fine, Bond, oh my god. Stop asking.”

Eve manages to turn her laugh into a cough, and Q knows she’s right. As far as her first kidnapping (hopefully only, probably first) as an SIS employee goes, Q feels like she got off stupidly easily. And it had taken six years to even get kidnapped in the first place.

(Field work: never again.)

It’s raining, a drizzle, when they get to the airport, and there’s a private plane there, waiting to take them back. Q sits across from Bond and curls up in her seat, aware of how tired her body is. 

“Lindgren?” Q asks, before she falls asleep. 

“Eve came over with a team, the other agents took care of him,” Bond answers, and she turns from where she’s looking out the window, staring at Q. “I’m sorry.”

“What, for getting me kidnapped?” Q asks, and snorts out a bit of a laugh. “It could have been a lot worse, I’m fine.”

“I know,” Bond says. “You’re quite good at being fine.”

“It’s my job,” Q says. “Someone has to be the sane one around here.”

Bond smiles, a simple little curve of her lips, and when Q puts her feet up on Bond's seat, tucking them in next to Bond’s hip, she doesn’t stop her. Q falls asleep with Bond drawing lazy lines across her ankles, her fingers pressed to Q’s skin just above the hem of her jeans. 

\---

Q has to go through psych evals before the let her go back to work, which is just strange. Q’s only had one other round of these, when she first started working here, and it’s mostly the same questions. Q feels like she should be off kilter, angry, afraid, but instead she’s just a little bit peeved that she never got to see if her taser worked. 

Nothing happened. Q’s willing to bet it’s the most anti-climatic kidnapping the agency has ever seen, and she’s glad for that. Bond’s little display with Torres had shaken her up more, and she’s worried that one day she’ll have dreams about the noise that were coming from his body as Bond broke him down, shattered him into a thousand tiny pieces, but for right now, nothing. 

They clear her for work, and she goes back to normal life in Mission Control with her normal minions and normal level of excitement. She’s glad for it. 

The one thing that’s become normal that she isn’t pleased with is the fact that she keeps opening her door for people while wearing little to not a lot of clothing. She’s going to start keeping a parka and jeans by the door for this specific purpose. 

Tonight, it’s midnight, and Bond, and the goddam galaxy leggings again. Bond smirks, lets herself in, and leaves her coat on Q’s sofa, as always. What’s new is that she pulls off her heels, leaves them neatly next to her coat, and then starts unzipping her dress. Q gets there first, in her personal space, and replaces Bond’s hands with her own, pulling the silver zipper down so that Bond can let the dress drop to the floor. Q unhooks Bond’s bra, and that joins the dress on the floor, black and grey fabric at their feet. 

“You have got to stop undressing when I can peel you out of your clothes instead,” Q says, and Bond turns to her, raises an eyebrow, and Q walks her backwards, towards her bedroom, because they’re not having sex on the carpet and getting rug burn in horrible places. 

Bond spins them so that she can push Q onto the bed, climbing over her, and runs a hand through Q’s hair before she presses a kiss to the corner of Q’s jaw, her lips, and Q’s mouth opens, breathing Bond in. 

“You know,” Bond says, pulling back as she slips a hand under Q’s tank top, palm hot on Q’s skin, her stomach, breasts, Bond's thumb brushes a nipple, makes Q suck in a breath and close her eyes. “If anyone ever gets their hands on you again they’re getting the business end of a PPK.”

“While I don’t mind the general protectiveness too much,” Q says, and her voice is soft, breathy around the edges, “I’ll have to draw the line at murderous protectiveness, because you might cause some sort of international incident, and the paperwork will be miserable.”

Q opens her eyes to find Bond above her, eyes dark, staring down at her, and Q raises her hands from Bond’s shoulder to her face, cupping her jaw. 

“I’m right here,” Q says, and Bond smiles, one side of her mouth curving up further than the other. 

“You are indeed,” Bond says, and there’s that voice, the one that drips with smoke and shards and promise and Bond runs her knuckles over Q, through her stupid leggings, and Q’s toes curl. She lets her head fall back, eyes closed again, and Bond kisses the line of her neck before moving that damn hand to slip under Q’s waistband. 

“Q,” Bond says, low and delighted. “Do you ever wear underwear?” 

“Not with leggings,” Q huffs, because of course not, they’re too tight for that. 

“You should wear leggings more often,” Bond says, almost a growl, and then Q moans, long and low, as Bond eases a finger into her, makes her grip at Bond’s shoulders like a lifeline. 

“No, because then-“ a bitten off cry, heat everywhere, across her skin, and another finger, and Q is squirming now, “-we’d never get-“ Q swears her spine is going to snap, the way she’s arching it, “-anything done.”

Bond pushes Q’s tank top up, kisses her breastbone, down her stomach, and then tugs at Q’s leggings, pulling them all the way down, and she has to move away to get them off, making Q sigh at the lack of sensation. 

She scoots up the bed, hair a disaster and shirt rucked up under her arms, and Bond comes after her, kissing her and biting at her bottom lip before her fingers head south again. 

“Oh – uh, _fuck_ ,” Q breathes when Bond’s thumb starts rubbing lazy circles around Q’s clit, and she lets her body fall back on the bed, puts her palms on the wall so that she can shove her body towards Bond’s fingers, hands, and now – _oh_. 

Bond mouth is on her, tongue and lips, and she hums and Q just about loses it, legs hooked over Bond’s shoulders, her heels pressed into Bond’s back with enough force to bruise. 

Q tangles the fingers of one hand in Bond’s hair, will be satisfied later with the havoc she’s wrecked on Bond’s braid, but right now she’s just trying to anchor herself on any part of Bond she can reach, skin on skin. Q is hot and flushed and probably wakes up the neighbors when Bond switches her hand and mouth, slipping two fingers back into Q and making her cry out (and god, she was _never_ this loud, not until Bond’s stupidly clever fingers). 

“More?” Bond asks, and Q manages to look down at her, which is a mistake because Bond is licking her lips, and Q knows what she’s tasting, and Q can only moan, choke out a breathy _of bloody course, you –_

A third finger renders Q unable to continue speaking. Bond’s mouth is on her clit, Q swears that there’s heat everywhere, and she grinds down as much as she can as Bond takes her time, teasing her and pulling her along an edge that Bond won’t let her tip over, not yet. Q is pretty sure that one of these days Bond is actually going to kill her via sex, because her body can’t put up with this. She is going to actually die. 

Q tries to tell Bond as much, but it just comes out in a series of breathy moans that end in a bitten off _fuck fuck fu-_ when Bond twists her fingers, speeds up, rakes teeth over a nipple, and finally, with one curl of her fingers, pulls Q over the edge, out of her skin. When Q is aware of anything at all again, Bond is lying next to her, watching her with a languid grin and bright eyes. 

“You make the most interesting noises for such a normally quiet person,” Bond notes. Q notices that there are what look to be claw marks at the back of her neck, and Q would blush, but she’s fairly sure there’s not a single part of her body that isn’t currently on fire to begin with. 

“I’m not _that_ quiet,” Q says, breathing fast, chest rising and falling as she tries to get oxygen back into her body.

“Not in this case,” Bond’s grin is sharp and beautiful, and when she kisses Q, long and lazy, their skin hot where they’re pressed together, Q chases her own taste out of Bond’s mouth.


End file.
